PLEASE WHITELIST US.
If it weren’t for the ads, LaptopMedia wouldn’t be running.
Our articles are free to read but the equipment in our Labs isn’t.
We want to be as objective and unbiased as possible, and you can help us keep our jobs by whitelisting our media in your adblocker.

The ZenBooks from ASUS have been widely renown for their high-performance hardware packed inside a portable and elegant chassis. The specs are always good enough not only for everyday business use but also for multimedia and even light gaming (or some other graphically-intensive workload). Fortunately, the ZenBook Flip 14 is a worthy member of the lineup but along with the price, the ultrabook adds a few notable features that aren’t necessarily inherent to the series.

Sporting the best of what Intel can offer right now – Core i7-8550U paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce MX150 GPU, 8GB of LPDDR3-1866 RAM and 512GB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage, the ZenBook Flip 14 impresses with exceptional performance with little to no compromise in the portability department. The all-aluminum chassis is a great fit for the ZenBook series and the Full HD IPS display will surely make up for a great multimedia experience but there are some troubling design quirks that need to be polished in the upcoming upgrades. These issues are usually non-existent in the rival convertibles such as the Lenovo Yoga series. To be honest, though, we are talking about a really small design flaw that doesn’t undermine the excellent hardware.

Retail package

The ZenBook Flip 14 comes in a small package containing all the usual user manuals, stylus pen, a leather pack for carrying it around and a USB to RJ-45 dongle if you need a more stable connection.

Design and construction

When it comes to design, the ZenBook Flip 14 is once again almost flawless. It has a stable all-aluminum construction with no inconsistencies – even the lid is resistant to torsion and bending. The same goes for the interior where the flex is barely noticeable and quite frankly, negligible given the size of this thing. Speaking of which, the ZenBook Flip’s hardware is packed in a 1.5 kg shell measuring just 13.9 mm in thickness. That’s really impressive considering the hardware it holds.

Our only complaint at this point is the hinges. Yes, the lid opens quite easily but this also makes the screen rather wobbly in presentation and laptop mode. In addition, when you open it up a little bit further, the lid lifts up the base, the rubber feet lose contact with the surface, the device becomes unstable and it’s easy to slide on the desk. It’s really annoying design flaw mainly because the pins on the back edge of the lid (where the hinges are) are not rubberized and don’t make a good grip.

In any case, the screen features thin side and upper bezels giving the machine a modern look while bringing the 14-inch footprint closer to the 13.3-inch form factor. The concentric brushed aluminum reminds us it’s a ZenBook and the dark gray color that we reviewed doesn’t seem to be a big fingerprint magnet, which is a big plus.

Input devices and I/O

Again, the ZenBook Flip 14 delivers an excellent working experience on the go. The keyboard isn’t very shallow and each keystroke gives you tactile and clicky feedback. Most users should find it quite easy to get used to. The same goes for the touchpad – smooth operations, excellent gliding surface and precise movements. The clickpad’s mouse clicks are light, deep enough and produce the same click along the whole surface. There’s also a fingerprint reader in the upper right corner for extra security.

In terms of connectivity, the ZenBook Flip 14 brings typical for a 15-inch laptop I/O setup. Although a bit overcrowded on the right side, you will find everything you’d probably need – full-sized HDMI, USB 3.0, USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1), 3.5 mm combo audio jack and a microSD card reader. And on the left, you will find the main exhaust vent for dispersing the heat and another USB 3.0 connector. The power button and the volume rocker are right next to the latter – they are easy to reach and distinguish from one another.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Accessing the hardware inside is pretty easy. Just remove all the screws on the bottom and gently pry up the plate. Be careful not to break any of the clips.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, M.2 SSD

As expected, the device comes only with an M.2 SSD – there’s no room for a 2.5-inch HDD. Unfortunately, though, the unit we’ve tested came with a 512GB SanDisk X400 M.2 SSD instead of a PCIe NVMe drive. This is disappointing since the price requires a PCIe SSD so be careful from where you buy the laptop. In some cases, the retailer will sell it with a PCIe NVMe SSD.

RAM

The motherboard doesn’t offer upgradable memory so you are limited to what you you’ve ordered in the first place. The soldered memory chip is 16GB of LPDDR3-2133.

Other components

The battery takes a good portion of the space inside and it’s rated at 57Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling design is rather interesting – two heatpipes (one bigger than the other) wrapping around the cooling fan and connecting both heatsinks.

Display quality

The ZenBook Flip 14 uses a Full HD (1920×1080) IPS touch panel with model number BOE NV140FHM-N62. It offers 157 ppi and 0.161 x 0.161 mm pixel pitch. It can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from at least 56 cm.

The display has excellent viewing angles.

We’ve recorded a peak brightness of 284 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 280 cd/m2 as average across the surface with 13% maximum deviation in the lower left corner. The correlated color temperature at maximum brightness is a bit colder than it should be – 7280K and remains pretty much the same when we go along the grayscale – 7030K. You can see how these values change at 140 cd/m2 (71% brightness) in the image below.

The maximum color deviation dE2000 compared to the center of the screen should be no more than 4.0 and if you are planning to do color-sensitive work, it should be lower than 2.0. But in this case, since the laptop is going to be used mostly for multimedia, office work and web browsing, a deviation of 3.15 in the lower left corner of the screen can be overlooked. The contrast ratio is high – 1050:1 before calibration and 1040:1 after calibration.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

Here, the display covers 90% of the sRGB color gamut so most of the web-based and HDTV colors can be reproduced.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 34 ms.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes.

Our equipment detected aggressive low-frequency PWM from 0 to 99% brightness so we strongly recommend using the device only at maximum brightness or consider using our Health-Guard profile.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.
You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.

Conclusion

The display is generally fine and offers punchy and vibrant images thanks to the wide sRGB coverage and high contrast ratio. However, the maximum brightness will be a limiting factor when using the notebook outdoors under direct sunlight. The glossy finish of the screen won’t help the situation either. Yet, the biggest issue here is the aggressive PWM we’ve recorded from 0 to 99% brightness. To avoid unwanted eyestrain, we suggest using our Health-Guard profile or just use it at maximum brightness at all times.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 configurations with 14.0″ BOE NV140FHM-N62 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen and the laptop can be found at Amazon: Buy from Amazon.com

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected]

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

THealth-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Software

We used the pre-installed Windows 10 for the writing of this review but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS, we suggest downloading all of the latest drivers from ASUS’ official support page.

Battery

Like most ZenBooks, the Flip 14 also impresses with long battery life mainly thanks to the energy-efficient Core i7-8550U processor and the generous 57Wh crammed inside. It easily becomes one of the most enduring 14-inch ultrabooks we’ve tested so far.

Of course, all tests were run using the same settings as always – Wi-Fi turned on, screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2 and Windows battery saving feature switched on.

We use F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

CPU – Intel Core i7-8550U

The Intel Core i7-8550U is part of the new 8th Generation Kaby Lake Refresh and it’s a direct successor to the Intel Core i7-7500U from the Kaby Lake generation and the Intel Core i7-6500U from the 6th Skylake generation. With the latest alteration to the ULV (ultra-low voltage) processors, Intel doubles the core count from 2 to 4 and retaining the so-called Hyper-Threading technology, keeping the same 14nm manufacturing process and feature the same 15W TDP.

However, due to the core count change, the base frequency of the Core i7-8550U is lowered to only 1.8 GHz while Turbo Boost frequencies remain pretty high – somewhere between 3.7 – 4.0 GHz. This ensures considerably higher multi-core and single-core performance during short workloads before going back to more bearable frequencies considering the 15W TDP but most of the other specs and features remain the same.

The chip also incorporates a newer Intel Gen 9.5 integrated graphics called Intel UHD Graphics 620. The support for Google’s VP9 codec and H.265/HEVC Main 10 is still the most notable feature of the iGPU. Intel claims that the new UHD 620 chips improve the overall power consumption compared to the previous one.

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)

ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) CPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different CPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / CPU.

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (2GB GDDR5)

The GeForce MX150 is an entry-level mobile card that is part of the latest NVIDIA Pascal lineup of GPUs, based on the GP108 chip paired with 2GB of GDDR5 memory via 64-bit interface. The GPU is the successor of GeForce 940MX and it was announced in Q2 of 2017.

The GeForce MX150 operates at a relatively high base frequency of 1469 MHz, while the Boost frequencies can go up to 1532 MHz. The GPU incorporates 384 shader units (CUDA cores) while the memory is clocked at 6008MHz (effective). These specs ensure a significant performance boost over the previous generation of Maxwell GPUs. The TDP of the GPU is lower than the last generation GTX 950M and even the GTX 1050 – 25W compared to 40W for the two models above. Performance-wise, the GeForce MX150 should be similar to the desktop GeForce GT 1030.

Along with all the power consumption and performance improvements, the GPU now supports essential features like Multi-Projection, VR Ready, G-SYNC, Vulkan and Multi-Monitor.

Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)

ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) GPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which ASUS ZenBook Flip 14 (UX461) model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different GPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / GPU.

Temperatures

Of course, the stress tests that we perform don’t represent real-life usage scenarios because even the most demanding games don’t require 100% CPU and GPU load all the time but it’s still the best way to assess the overall stability of the cooling system in the long run.

We kick things off with 100% CPU load for about an hour. Interestingly, the Core i7-8550U reached a maximum of 3.5 GHz for the first few seconds, it went through 2.5 and 2.2 GHz quite fast before settling at 1.9 GHz. No throttling occurred but it’s obvious that the system can’t sustain higher frequencies for some reason.

Switching on the GPU stress test resulted in CPU throttling at around 1.1 GHz but to our surprise, the GPU didn’t throttle as much. It kept fairly high frequencies at 1202 MHz and exceptionally low temperatures – 64 °C. It appears that the BIOS settings prioritize lower temperatures rather than performance because obviously, both chips can go much higher judging by the fairly low operating temperatures.

As expected, temperatures on the surface were a bit warm but nothing alarming. Probably higher inner temperatures would have resulted in higher outer temperatures so that’s why the CPU and GPU tend to keep things cool under the hood. We were also surprised by the low noise emissions – even under full load, the cooling fans were pretty quiet.

33.6°

43.7°

41.6°

34.2°

42.1°

37.6°

35.1°

32.0°

31.9°

Verdict

The ZenBook Flip lineup has been around for a while now but the new generation featuring a familiar, yet fresh design and the best of what Intel and NVIDIA can offer, for now, is a game-changer. Even though the chassis is entirely made of aluminum, it’s impressively thin, light and doesn’t trip the performance of the CPU and GPU, although we found the system struggling to keep Core i7-8550U’s boost frequency for a long time. In short workloads and everyday use, the issue won’t be noticed.

Once again, the device proves to be great traveling companion thanks to the excellent input devices, small dimensions and amazing battery life, even though the issue with the rubber feet can be frustrating. When you open the lid a bit further, the bottom loses contact with the surface and easily slides on the desk. Seems like a rookie mistake and we hope it will get fixed after the first refresh since it’s the only design flaw we’ve encountered.

But what about display quality? Well, on contrary to all ZenBooks we’ve reviewed so far, this one is a mixed bag. It does offer punchy and vibrant images due to the wide sRGB coverage and high contrast but the glossy finish combined with relatively low maximum brightness will pose a challenge when using it outdoors. Also, the aggressive PWM will be tiring to a large number of users, especially to those with sensitive eyes.

Is it worth your hard-earned money? Well, quite frankly, the ZenBook Flip 14 is one of the best convertibles currently on the market successfully challenging Lenovo’s Yoga 720 (13-inch) and easily beating most of its direct competitors. And if the 360-degree rotatable hinge isn’t essential, consider the standard ZenBook UX430 or Lenovo’s Ideapad 720s.

In some regions, the notebook ships with M.2 SATA SSD instead of PCIe NVMe SSD

Author: Rossen Pandev

Author: Kroum NikolovAn engineer with over thirty years of experience in the realm of electronics. High technology has always been an integral part of his life, driving him to constantly face the challenges it presents head on.

Comments

The Yoga 920 is considerably more expensive, well above the ZenBook. Still, it would have been an interesting comparison you are right. Unfortunately, we haven’t reviewed the Yoga 920 and can’t make an informative comparison.